


Desolation Angels

by theladyscribe



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-09 11:38:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/455017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theladyscribe/pseuds/theladyscribe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She slides into the passenger seat and shuts the door as he throws the car into drive. He speeds down the empty highway, deftly avoiding the dead cars dotting the asphalt. // AU starting at the end of AHBL Part One. (An exercise in character study.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Desolation Angels

She tells him her name is Jamie and she’s from Tulsa, Oklahoma, originally, but her parents moved her to Indy when she was about eleven and she’s not been to the Midwest since. It’s mostly true; she spent a week at her grandparents’ farm the summer she was fifteen. She had a fling with the boy from the next farm over, and they went to a party at the reservoir the night before she was supposed to go home. No one in her family knows it, but she left her virginity in the back of that boy’s cherry-red pick-up truck. The irony is not lost on her.

She doesn’t know why she thinks of all this as she throws her bag into the back seat of his car. After all, the world’s ended (she’s pretty sure), and her family is gone, and that boy is probably gone too. This guy with his beast of a car is the first person she’s met in weeks who actually looks like he can handle the end of the world. Everyone else is just a ghost of their former selves, lost without interstate highways, fast food, electricity. She wonders if maybe that’s why he pulled over in the first place – because maybe he can tell she’s actually secretly enjoying the silence of the desolate roads she’s been wandering.

She slides into the passenger seat and shuts the door as he throws the car into drive. He speeds down the empty highway, deftly avoiding the dead cars dotting the asphalt. Music is playing – it’s a cassette player, which is practically a foreign concept to her – and Jamie doesn’t recognize it. It has a soothing rhythm, though, and soon she finds herself humming along a little. He glances at her, cracks a smile, and then she realizes, “You never told me your name.”

His smile disappears. “It’s Dean,” he says quietly, as though if he says it too loudly, someone will take it from him.

“Like James Dean?” she asks, and his smile returns immediately.

“Something like that,” he answers.

*

She isn’t fully conscious of when she comes to love him, only that she does. She supposes it was bound to happen; after all, they’ve been traveling the empty highways for months with almost no other human contact (and those they meet are terrified of the man and the girl who come barreling down the interstates, oblivious to the bleakness of the rest of the world).

There isn’t much beyond driving to do or say – utter freedom until all the cars still scattered across the roads are emptied of their fuel, and when that happens, who knows where they’ll be?

They don’t have a mission, though Dean refuses to stop anywhere for more than a couple days. She doesn’t quite understand his reticence, but she doesn’t mind it. If she wanted to stay stationary, she wouldn’t have climbed in his car.

*

“Who is she?” Jamie asks one morning as they’re driving nowhere on an abandoned backroad.

Dean frowns at her. “Who is who?”

“The girl in your nightmares. Sam.”

He pales. “No one,” he says. “Sam is no one.” Which means that Sam is the world, and she turns away so he won’t see her disappointment.

*

A few nights later, Dean says to the dark above his bed, “I had a brother. His name was Sam.” He doesn’t say anything else, and Jamie is a little ashamed at the relief that washes over her, that she’s not competing with a ghost.

*

“I had a brother. His name was Sam.” And he launches into a tale of nightmares – a fire in the nursery followed by a twenty-year crusade against the darkness that ultimately ended in tragedy. “Sam died in Cold Oak,” he whispers hoarsely, and Jamie can hear the tears in his voice. “And then, the man who killed him, he unleashed Hell. It’s my fault. I’m sorry.”

Jamie wants to tell him that he’s wrong, that he couldn’t have stopped the end of the world anyway, no matter what happened to his brother, but she isn’t sure that she wouldn’t be lying. Instead she slips out of her bed and moves across the room to his. Softly, she slides in next to him, putting her arms around him. He tries to move away, but she pulls him closer, resting her head on his chest.

He stiffens and then removes her arms from around his torso, deftly sliding out of her grip. He gets out of the bed and pulls on his jeans and boots before stepping outside, shutting the door decisively behind him.

She shifts in the bed, pressing into the warmth left by his body, and she lets her tears fall to the pillow that still smells like the shampoo in his hair.

*

When she wakes in the morning, he’s sitting on the bed opposite, watching her. She turns away, blushing slightly.

He stands and begins throwing his clothes in his duffle. “Come on,” he says.

So Jamie goes.  



	2. Jungleland

He sees her on the side of the road, the first living person he’s seen in…well, in a long time. She’s lying on the roof of an old Dodge Caravan, looking for all the world like she just stepped out of a Bruce Springsteen song. She sits up when he pulls over, shields her eyes against the glare off the empty cars that pack the abandoned highway, and now he can see that she can’t be more than twenty (too young to be on her own, surely). She watches him carefully as he gets out of the car, and now he can see that she has a knife (small, probably no more than a three-inch blade) within reach. He likes her already.

“You need help?” he says, leaning his arms on the roof of the car, but his voice sounds rough and awkward, so he coughs and tries again. “You need a ride?”

She shakes her head. “I was about to ask you the same thing.” She pauses, then asks, “You see anyone else on the highway?”

He shakes his head. “Just me. No one else for miles.” Of course there’s no one else, hasn’t been anyone else for days, weeks, years (he’s stopped keeping track of the hours). She’s the first human being he’s seen in a long time.

“You want a place to stay? Got beds and food. It’s not much, but it’ll keep you alive.”

He considers her offer for a moment. His brother is dead, gutted by that sonofabitch demon toadie, and he doesn’t know where anyone else is, where any of his friends – any other hunters – might have ended up. They’ve scattered – been scattered – to the four winds, every last person he ever knew, and he has no idea whether they’re alive or not. And this girl, she’s offering a place to lay his head that’s not the back seat of the Impala, food that may actually be decent. He looks up at her and says, “I’ll keep driving, thanks.”

He moves to get back in the car, when she stops him, saying, “Wait.” She hops off the van and comes to stand opposite him. “Where you headed?”

He shrugs. “Dunno.”

She shifts from side to side and then blurts, “Can I come with you?”

He almost says no, almost shouts _Christo_ at her, but if she’d been planning to kill him, she’d have done it already. Instead, he says, “What’s your name?” and she grins.

“Jamie,” she answers over her shoulder as she grabs her bag from the top of the Dodge and climbs into the Impala. “From Tulsa, Oklahoma, but we moved to Indy when I was eleven, and I’ve not been back since.”

Dean throws the car into gear and heads west.

*

Their days are long and subdued – there’s no real sense of time when you’ve got no destination in mind beyond _somewhere else_. Mostly they drive until Dean gets tired, and then they break into a motel or, occasionally, a house. Jamie, it turns out, has a knack for picking out places that still have working electricity – a rarity when most people are dead or just gone, leaving the survivors of the apocalypse to fend for themselves in a world without technology.

Dean actually kind of likes that part of the apocalypse – it means people have to rely on instincts and common sense instead of the internet and the government. He thinks that Jamie probably likes it, too. Any other reason she’d have gone with him (stupidity or attraction) he doesn’t even want to contemplate.

*

He’s surprised when she asks him about Sam. Hearing his brother’s name after he’s been gone (dead) for a month is like a punch in the gut and he can barely speak. But he tells her that Sam is no one, hoping she’ll let it lie. Her silence hurts more than her question, and days later he finally speaks.

“I had a brother. His name was Sam.”

*

When he finally tells her the whole story, he’s hoping for the silence again. Instead, she climbs into bed with him – her attempt at comfort, he knows – but it doesn’t feel right and he leaves, trying to ignore the way she presses into the spot where he’d been lying.

He sits on the curb next to the Impala, staring up at the stars (so much brighter now that there are no streetlights), and he wonders what has brought him to this place in time where the world has ended but it still keeps going. He wonders why the demons haven’t come for him yet, why the yellow-eyed bastard and his sonofabitch soldier-general haven’t tracked him down and torn him to shreds. He thinks maybe they don’t need to, that they’ve taken everything else from him and don’t need to watch him anymore, that he’s already failed the test and he doesn’t even amuse them anymore.

He waits until Jamie’s definitely fallen back to sleep before returning to their room. She’s lying in the center of the bed, curled around a pillow as if she maybe fell asleep crying. A flash of guilt goes through him, but there’s nothing he can really do.

He sits on the other bed and watches her sleep.


	3. Rocky Mountain High

He understands now why Sam was so reticent for so long after Jess died. It’s been months since the world ended, but it feels like yesterday still, and the only thing keeping him alive is the girl in the seat beside him. He’s a little afraid to think about what that might mean (everyone he’s ever cared about is dead), and he tries to ignore the nagging little voice that whispers that she’ll leave him (he’ll fail and she’ll leave him).

*

He’s not sure what they’re going to do if – when – they run into a hostile group of survivors. He knows he could get out alive, but he doesn’t even know if she’s ever seen a gun outside of television, let alone a whole arsenal like the one he’s got in the trunk. He thinks about asking her if she knows how to shoot, but isn’t quite sure how to work it into conversation. Not that they have much in the way of conversation—it’s not like there’s much to talk about beyond whether they should switch roads or stay in a house instead of a hotel or eat beans instead of canned soup.

But when they start seeing signs for Denver, he finally breaks down and asks, “You know how to shoot?”

“Like, a gun?”

“Yeah.”

“No. Why?”

He pulls over instead of answering, gets out of the car and gestures for her to do the same. He pops the trunk, the familiar motion an old friend. “Take this.” He hands her a pistol and grabs a handful of bullets.

The rest of the day is spent teaching her how to aim and fire. She misses more than she hits their bean-can targets, but she doesn’t complain about the sound or the recoil and it’s a start.

*

He knows her hands must ache the next day, but she doesn’t say anything about it. Instead she asks him why now, after they’ve been on the road for so long.

He doesn’t really have an answer for her, except that Colorado looks too much like Oregon and a town of rabid people who disappeared without a trace and it makes him nervous that they’ve had months of driving across the country and only seen a few frightened people. He shrugs and says, “Just thought that you should know how.”

She accepts his answer with a nod, but he can tell she expects a better one later.

*

She asks him again that night while they wait for their dinner (beans and soup) to finish heating over the fire, “Why now?” He still doesn’t have an answer, not really, so he shrugs again and says, “It was time you learned.”

“Bull shit,” she answers. “Why now, Dean?”

It startles him that she uses his name; they almost never actually call each other by name – no need when they’re the only two people for miles. Startles him so much he says, “Because we don’t know what’s out there, Jamie, and when I die, you gotta be able to take care of yourself” - says it without even thinking and that shuts her up quick.

*

The next morning she wakes him up just as the sun’s rising. She’s got the pistol tucked in her belt and his trusty sawed-off is resting on her shoulder. “If you’re gonna teach me, you better teach me right,” she says, a small smile on her face.

He smiles back, runs a hand through his hair (getting too long, but no time or reason to cut it), and gathers up the cans from supper before following her out to their makeshift shooting range.

*

He catches her watching him one sunny afternoon as they drive through the Rockies, her mouth quirked into a smile.

“What?” he snaps, his eyes narrowing but a small grin tugging at his lips.

She shakes her head. “Nothing. It’s just – how old are you?”

She has this habit of asking questions he doesn’t always remember the answers to.

“What’s the date?” he asks after a brief moment of trying to count the days in his head. He figures she probably knows – she’s the one who keeps track of the passage of time.

“Dunno. March something-or-other, I guess. It’s early spring, at any rate.”

He’s missed his birthday. Not that it matters (it’s been almost a year since Cold Oak). Besides, it’s been perpetual summer it seems like, the seasons all fucked up, no snow even here in the mountains. “Twenty-nine, then. I turned twenty-nine in January. You?”

“I’ll be twenty in July,” she answers, and it comes as a bit of a surprise to him – that she’s so young – and yet it doesn’t surprise him at all.

*

She fits against him smoothly, her spine sliding into place against his chest as he helps her line up a shot (she’s progressed past the lightest of his firearms, moved on to the shotguns). She smells like expensive shampoo, one of the few vanities that’s actually easier to maintain now than before the world ended. He lets himself have a moment of weakness, reveling in the feel of having someone so close that he can feel her hair tickling his face.

“Dean?” Jamie turns and looks up at him. “Are you okay?”

He blinks. “Sorry, yeah.” He shakes his head as she turns away, reminds himself that she’s only nineteen, younger than Sammy, younger than Jo, even, and _she_ had seemed pretty young to him all those ages ago. She’s almost ten years younger than him, and if the apocalypse hadn’t happened, he’d probably go to jail for just thinking about her.

“Okay?” she repeats.

“Yeah, okay,” he replies, and he steps back from her. “Got it?” She nods almost imperceptibly, eyes on the target, and he says, “Go for it.”

The crack of the bullet echoes against the mountains.


	4. Barricades of Heaven

She’d be a liar if she claimed he doesn’t scare her sometimes. She doesn’t understand, for instance, why he suddenly decides to teach her to shoot. He does it with almost manic fervor, adamant that she learn before they drive through Denver (which is probably as empty as all the other big cities they’ve been through).

She asks him why and, as usual, he doesn’t give her a straight answer. But after months on the road with him, she knows how to deal with his enigmatic half-answers, so she keeps pressing, keeps asking why, until he finally spits that she has to know so when he dies she can protect herself. It stops her short, leaves her unable to think beyond a gripping fear of this desolate world without him.

So she lets him teach her to shoot, tries to make light of it, as if it doesn’t sort of terrify her that they’ve been driving for eternity with enough weapons in the trunk to arm an entire military troop. And if her heart beats a little faster when they have target practice, maybe it’s just the knowledge of holding a loaded gun in her hands and not the way his hands seem to spread warmth wherever they fall along her body.

*

She likes to watch him while he drives, likes watching the sunlight glint off his hair, likes the way he relaxes into the seat of the car like it was made for him (and maybe it was).

He catches her watching one day and she asks him how old he is, not really expecting an answer. “I turned twenty-nine in January,” he says, and she has to admit she’s a little surprised. She thought he was younger, but then she’s never been a good judge of age.

*

In the dark of night, she worries. She worries she’ll wake in the morning and find him gone. She worries they’ll run out of food one day. She worries he’ll die and she’ll have to bury him (or she’ll die, and he’ll have to bury her).

It keeps her awake sometimes, counting the seconds between the light snores from across the room.

He gets angry with her when she doesn’t sleep. She wonders what he’d say if she admitted her fears to him. Instead, she lies, says it’s the heat or the cold or the lumpy mattress. She doesn’t think he believes her, but he never calls her on it.

*

They drive south and east in late spring, passing through Texas and Louisiana, crossing the Mississippi and driving until they reach the Atlantic coast just south of the Florida border. It’s the first time she’s ever been to the ocean, and he blinks and says, “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

She doesn’t have an answer to that beyond the fact that she never really thought about requesting destinations – despite the fact that they’re completely free to do whatever they like, they still seem to have some boundaries. Like how they never talk about their pasts (not since that time when he told her about his brother), and how they never talk about the future beyond _tomorrow, we’ll drive north_.

*

They spend almost two weeks there – the longest they’ve spent anywhere – staying in a bright house right on the ocean.

Jamie wakes up with the sunrise every morning and goes out to the beach, reveling in the salt air and the cool water that dances around her ankles. Sometimes Dean joins her, but more often he stands on the deck of the house and stares off into the distant horizon.

*

The second week at the beach, Dean goes silent. He stops talking completely, and it takes all of her effort to just get him to eat.

It’s not until a few days later, when they’re driving north and toward the mountains, that she realizes: it’s probably May.

The world ended a year ago.

*

When they stop that night, Dean goes straight to bed. Jamie goes through the motions of her nightly ritual – quick shower in freezing water, jar of applesauce before she brushes her teeth. She pulls on her pajamas (a t-shirt and a pair of boxer shorts he gave her the first week they were traveling together) and comes out of the bathroom.

She looks at the two beds in the room – his is by the door, hers by the bathroom. He’s still awake, but he doesn’t even seem to notice her presence. She moves between the beds and then crawls in beside him, and he doesn’t push her away. She wants to say something comforting, but she doesn’t have the words. So she wraps her arms around him, closing her eyes as she waits for him to get up and leave her like the last time she tried to do this. But he doesn’t leave. He doesn’t do anything, and she takes what she can.

*

The next morning she wakes, and he’s sitting across from her, eating peaches out of a can. “Ever been to New England?” he asks, slurping down a slice of Georgia.  


  



	5. Take It Easy

He knows she doesn’t always sleep, but he doesn’t know the why of it and getting answers out of her is like pulling teeth. He first notices it as they’re driving east through Texas, how pale she is in the warm spring sunshine. She needs the sunshine, he decides, so he turns even further south and they end up in Florida.

But it turns out Florida’s not such a good idea. The sun’s too bright and Florida looks too much like California and he realizes that it’s probably May.

The world ended a year ago.

*

Food tastes like ash in his mouth and it’s all he can do to keep from retching after every meal. Just three restless days and sleepless nights and he decides they need to get out, get gone, never come back to Florida.

So they pack up, and he can practically see the worry coming off her in waves as they head north and a little west, into the mountains where the air isn’t so heavy on his heart.

*

That night, exhaustion hits him and he falls into bed, too tired to sleep. Jamie moves around him, washing, changing, rituals she’s been following for nearly a year. But tonight she crawls in beside him instead of going to her own bed. He could get up, move away, but the effort’s too much, so he lets her wrap her arms around him. Lets her hold him close, and maybe a small part of him wants it.

*

He wakes before she does and removes himself from the bed. He slept hard last night, eight solid hours of deep sleep, and now he feels well-rested, like he can function again. He washes and changes – even takes the time to shave – and chooses a can of peaches for breakfast. When Jamie wakes, he asks her if she’s ever been to New England.

*

They come to a stop somewhere in the Carolinas – he’s not sure which one, they were on the Parkway and lost track of time and distance again (no other cars along this old highway). Everything’s green here, and cool like the icy streams along the side of the road. It’s a good place, he thinks, a good place to rest for a while that’s not too much like _California/Crater Lake/Cold Oak_. New England can wait for now.

He teaches her things he learned from his dad, self-defense and hand-to-hand combat – all those things he learned so long ago. They break into a bar and he teaches her how to play pool (even if it’s a useless talent now). She’s good at it – a natural if he ever saw one – and she even beats him once.

*

He catches himself wondering whether they’d have met if the world hadn’t ended. He knows they probably wouldn’t have – too many people in a country too big – but he likes to think that they would have found each other even if life were normal (even if he were still hunting).

And then he chastizes himself for thinking such things. She’s too young (he’s too old) and there’s nothing there but friendship anyway.

He’s pretty sure.

*

The world changes.

Spring turns into summer quickly, and they’re still in the Carolinas in what is probably June or maybe July. She’s snuck her way into his bed, insinuating herself there every night, like that night in Georgia, just _there_ , the added warmth like an extra blanket against the dark.

He doesn’t mind it, likes it, even. Falls asleep with the sweet smell of her shampoo tickling his senses, wakes with his arms curled around her, legs and blankets in a tangle. He knows he should put a stop to it, that he’s a dirty old man because of it, but every time he tries to say something, she frowns a little, like she doesn’t understand, and he can’t do it.

He doesn’t like to think about what it means, how much they might need each other, where it’ll go from here.

*

He asks her when they’re cooking dinner (found an overgrown garden in someone’s back yard, making the most of the half-wild vegetables while they can), “Why were you sitting on the side of the highway that day?” It’s been bothering him for a while now, why she was there on that day so long ago (more than a year they’ve been together), like she was waiting for him.

“Couldn’t stand it in the city anymore. Felt like, if I stayed there, I’d just waste away.”

He nods; it makes sense. He’d been doing the same thing, kept moving just to remember he was still alive even when he felt dead.

After a while, she says, “Why do you think we were the survivors? I mean, out of all the billions of people in the world, why us?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t know.” He thinks he knows why he’s alive – the yellow-eyed bastard has no more reason to kill him, not when living can be more unbearable than death. But that doesn’t explain why Jamie’s still here.

*

They leave the Carolinas, finally heading toward New England when the humidity becomes unbearable and thunderstorms hit every afternoon.

He wonders if there will be any people there, or if New England will be like the rest of the country, barren and empty. He kind of thinks that out of all the people in the country, the ones most likely to survive the apocalypse would probably be the Amish, since they never bought lunch from McDonald’s anyway.

He’s a little disappointed when they hit Pennsylvania and they aren’t greeted by bearded men with horses and buggies. He tells Jamie this, and she laughs, light and clear, like everything that’s good in the world.


	6. Watershed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s the first time in a long time Jamie’s glad there’s an extra bed.

There are other people in Pennsylvania. They’re on the side of the road, three guys and two girls all looking ragged, like maybe they haven’t slept well in a long time. They’re the first people Jamie’s seen (besides Dean, of course) in weeks, maybe even months.

“Pull over,” she says. He ignores her. “Dean, pull over,” she says again, and he still doesn’t stop, just tightens his jaw and pushes down on the pedal even harder, and all she can do is watch their frightened faces fade into the distance.

When she can no longer see them, she asks quietly, “Why didn’t you stop?”

“They had guns,” he says dismissively. “That makes them dangerous.”

She snorts. “You have guns,” she reminds him. “Does that make you dangerous?”

He doesn’t answer, keeps facing straight forward, won’t even glance her way.

*

It’s the first time in a long time Jamie’s glad there’s an extra bed.

*

Supper is quiet that night.

And then, “Why didn’t you stop, Dean? They’re the first people we’ve seen in months. Maybe they could have helped us or we could have helped them or—”

“Help them what, Jamie?” He overrides her. “We’ve barely got enough food for ourselves, and what little we have is going to spoil eventually. We don’t need them, and we can’t just pick up every person we see on the side of the road.”

“No? Well, newsflash, Dean: you picked me up on the side of the road.”

“That was different!” he insists, his voice rising. “It was _you_ , and not five random people. It’s hard enough as it is, staying out of harm’s way when it’s just the two of us, and I can’t do it. I can’t keep you safe if I have to worry about other people. They would have been a burden I don’t need.”

“A burden you don’t need?” she repeats. “Is that all people are to you? A burden?” He starts to protest, but she shakes him off, standing and grabbing her jacket. “Maybe I should just – I’ll go, so I won’t be a _burden_ anymore.” And she rushes out the door, letting it slam in her wake as she heads for the highway.

*

She doesn’t make it to the highway before exhaustion and frustration take over and she comes to a stop under a tree on the side of the road. She’s still angry and bitterly confused, but her muscles ache from too many hours in the car and not enough movement and sitting under the tree comes as a relief.

She’s cooled off some, the twilight air calming her nerves, but she’s not ready to go back just yet (she doesn’t know if he’ll want to see her). So she sits under the tree, watching the stars appear as the sun finishes its descent.

*

She must drift to sleep, because the next thing she knows the sky is black and huge and the familiar rumble of the car engine finds her. She opens her eyes in time to see Dean stumble frantically toward her in the flare of the headlights.

He falls to his knees beside her, holds her arms and stares at her before wrapping her in a bonecrushing embrace. He has his nose pressed into her hair, she can feel his warm breath against her forehead, and she tries to move back, slip out, but he pulls her even closer.

“Don’t go,” he whispers against her skin. “Please don’t go.” She can’t speak (can hardly breathe he’s holding her so tightly), so she settles for burrowing her face into the curve of his neck and shoulder.

“Not going anywhere,” she murmurs against his leather jacket when he finally lets up a little, and she pulls away so she can look him in the eye.

It’s hard to tell in the half-light of the headlights, but she thinks his eyes are red-rimmed like he’s been crying. She lifts a hand to his face, brushes her fingers across the scrape of beard and under his eyes, lets her palm settle against his cheek. His eyes dart back and forth across her face – _like a deer in headlights_ , she thinks – and then his hands move from her arms to cradle her neck and he’s pulling her close again, but this time his lips find hers.

She freezes for a moment, and he begins to pull away, a muttered, “Sorry,” on his lips, but she grabs his shirt and tugs him back to her.

“Don’t be,” she says, and then she’s kissing him like there’s no tomorrow, pressing against him, her whole body matched along his, ignoring the tree roots bruising her shins.

She’s starting to slide his jacket off his shoulders when he stops her. “Not here,” he says, and she almost laughs because, seriously, _there’s no one to see them_ , but then he says, “We gotta find a pharmacy. Condoms,” and it hits her. There’s no turning back from here. It could be the end of the line if they’re not careful.

*

It’s a bit like learning to live all over again, she thinks later, after they’ve broken into a Walgreens and raided the birth control and gone back to the motel where, as Dean says, they can do things properly.

It’s not perfect – far from it, actually, with more fumbling and awkwardness than she would have expected, even though it’s been, well, a really long time since she (since either of them) did this last.

Still, it’s good in a way that has less to do with pleasure than it does comfort, and she’s surprised to find, as she begins to drift off to sleep, that this isn’t the end of the line; it’s the beginning.

***

Lyrics to “Watershed” can be found [here](http://www.indigogirls.com/discographyandlyrics/lyrics/nomadsindianssaints.html#watershed).

Feedback is loved.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Waiting All My Life(the light in the darkness remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1565171) by [tifaching](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tifaching/pseuds/tifaching)




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